The city’s northwest industrial neighborhood will be home to a $13 million crumb rubber facility owned by Dash Mult-Corp, parent company of McMinnville-based RB Rubber Products. The new facility will be capable of grinding old tires into rubber crumbs 24 hours a day, five days a week, quite a jump from the current production rate at Dash’s RB Recycling plant in north Portland. All 30 workers from the recycling plant will join about 20 new employees at the new plant when it opens in January. The McMinnville plant currently handles the refining process, turning the large crumbs from Portland into smaller pieces that can be remolded into matting for playgrounds and athletic facilities. “We will go from the whole tire all the way down to the crumb in the new facility,” says Greg Divis, RB Rubber president.

Knowledge Learning Corporation acquired Children’s Creative Learning Center in early April. Knowledge Learning is the private provider of early childhood education and care that moved its headquarters to Portland following the acquisition of KinderCare in 2005. San Francisco-based Children’s Creative is an employer-sponsored program. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Portland’s downtown condo market has been flooded with new buildings in recent years. Now some developers, including Opus Carroll of the 21-story Ladd Tower, are taking a new approach: luxury apartments. Ladd Tower was originally planned as condos but Opus Carroll, a partnership between Opus Northwest and Carroll Investments, announced their decision to market the building’s units as apartments. John Bartell, vice president and general manager for Opus Northwest, says the supply of condos left a demand for high-end urban apartments unmet. Construction will begin in June after the historic Ladd Carriage house is moved off site.

BY LINDA BAKER | OB EDITOR

BY JASON NORRIS, CFA | OB GUEST BLOGGER

Pets.com, GeoCities, eToys, and WorldCom … blasts-from-the-past that all signify the late 1990s Internet bubble. Yet we believe the dynamics of the market, specifically in technology stocks, are much different today than it was during the late 1990s.

Brand Stories

BY KATRINA WALKER

Generations of students and graduates have been plagued by the question: What is my true calling in life? Four alumni from Corban University’s Hoff School of Business who graduated in different decades say the school helped them find the answer by giving them a practical, well-rounded education.

It’s happening whether anyone’s ready or not. Businesses here in Oregon and across the U.S. are already experiencing the effects of the largest generational shift in recent history, and these changing tides will impact every level of the workplace — from a company’s executive leadership to its cultural core.

The Oregon Chapter of the Society for Marketing Professional Services, will be hosting it’s Annual Dinner and Keynote event on March 12, 2015. The evening promises to be memorable, with this years Keynote, Christine McKinley.